CHRIS COLEMAN has finally had his say on his Coventry City's costly disallowed goal at Cardiff.

The Sky Blues boss remains less than happy with the decision to rule out Freddy Eastwood's 56th-minute strike on Tuesday, apportioning the majority of the blame with the linesman.

"A lot of people have been talking about whether it was handball by Scott Dann or not, but that's irrelevant to me because once a decision is made, it is made," he said.

"If you look at it again, the linesman raises his flag and the referee waves play on and the linesman immediately lowers his flag.

"We play on and 10 seconds later the ball is in the back of the net after a great bit of play between Clinton Morrison and Freddy Eastwood to make it 1-1. We celebrate and 10 seconds later it is 1-0 again because he has taken the goal away.

"He said that he thought the linesman had flagged for off-side but I spoke with the Cardiff management team after the game and they told me that the referee had gestured to them that the ball had hit his chest when they were appealing before we scored.

"That's coming from the assistant manager of Cardiff City. I spoke with the referee after the game and he told me he thought the linesman was flagging for offside. If he's flagging for offside and the referee overrules it, then he puts it down.

"If the linesman is flagging for a fault, such as hand ball, he has got to keep his flag up. If he kept his flag up I would not be having this conversation because as we carried on playing I would have been looking at the linesman thinking he is going to bring it back because there has been a foul or something.

"But he put it up and then down, which means the referee has over-ruled him. So the linesman has not helped the referee out.

"It was like going 2-0 down because to get a goal at that time I felt we would have gone on to win the game."

He added: "We are in the first season of the Respect the Referees and coming from someone who was sent off in the first four games, I truly am respectful of referees but sometimes I think they don't help themselves."